Total perspective vortex

I have no idea whether the sequence above is an accurate forecast for the next 120 million years, but it's a certainly a hypnotic video. Watching 650 million years slip past in little more than a minute puts things into perspective.

And if you're looking for more evidence of our insignificance within the Universe, here's an illustration of how small the Earth is in relation to some of our inteplanetary neighbours.

Douglas Adams would have us believe that this kind of thing should terrify us, annihilating any sense of self-worth that we may have managed to accumulate. "In an infinite universe, the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion," he tells us.

On balance, though, I find it oddly calming.

Comments

It's a nice animation of current data. The continents at high latitudes distort because of the map projection. The collision of India and the movement of Southeast Asia are well done. For the "near" future - 50 million years, it's about as accurate as we can project. Beyond that, I seriously doubt the Atlantic will begin to close up again. Far more likely the Pacific will continue to shrink and "we" will see the Americas collide with Asia and Australia. We will have our next supercontinent, wihich will probably begin breaking up quickly, perhaps even as the Americas collide.